Warframe‘s upcoming free Warframe 1999 expansion is about to give players something they’ve always wanted: the chance to romance their space ninjas. This romance mechanic is a first for the game. Warframe‘s devs were notably inspired by Baldur’s Gate 3, and they wanted to do it right. The problem was that they had no experience with romance in video games. Hence, it’s up to an award-winning romance novelist to get the job done.
Digital Extremes, Warframe‘s developer, had to hire a romance novelist and not just any. Her name is Kat Kingsley and she’s a decorated veteran in the field of steamy pages. Kingsley once worked for Volition Games which, unfortunately, had to shut down. So she was in the market for a job. Through a twist of fate, or the universe’s playful coincidence, Digital Extremes needed a romance author for Warframe 1999, and Kingsley was unfettered.
That was a year ago. Now, Kingsley and Digital Extremes are confident with how the romance aspect in Warframe 1999 turned out. In fact, Kingsley apparently wrote over two romantic novels worth of content and dialog for Warframe 1999. That’s a lot of love.
“Well, here I am a year later! It’s been an absolute joy to be able to not only get to work on the system design for it but also to be able to write and sculpt what it could be. Not only am I able to write all the words, but working with the designers, the UI artists, the programmers – I’ve been able to really sculpt the experience for people. It’s been such a pleasure,” according to Kingsley in an interview.
They Also Made Sure You’ll Want to Romance the New Characters
Of course, if you haven’t seen the trailers or the teaser images already, Warframe 1999 will also be the first time that the old robotic Warframes receive humanized versions of themselves.
Warframe 1999 will take place in an alternate reality of sorts where some of the Warframes are still stuck in what we can only assume as their human progenitor phases or Protoframes. That means prior to being turned into robotic or alien biomechanical weapons.
In short, some of the most popular Warframes were given human faces and even voice acting and dialog.
“Players have loved our characters for years, they’ve had huge positive responses to our characters and we felt that with The Drifter being more mature and the proto-frames feeling like a found-family, what if there was a way to leverage the 1999 worldbuilding to create a text message relationship system, be it platonic or romantic,” according to Rebecca Ford, Warframe’s Creative Director.
Even Megan Everett, Warframe‘s Community Director, has admitted that there was already a wealth of fanfictions from the player community during our own interview with her. So it’s just a matter of giving the players what they want officially.
For the record, six main characters will be added to Warframe‘s Warframe 1999, and all of them will be presumably romance-able within the expansion area. Here they and their Warframe equivalents, take your pick.
| Protoframe | Warframe Equivalent |
| Arthur | Excalibur |
| Amir | Volt |
| Aoi | Mag |
| Quincy | Cyte-09 |
| Letitia | Leticia |
| Eleanor | Eleanor |
Of course, the romance mini-game and aspect are optional. Warframe 1999 will be adding lots of new gameplay content and areas, as well as some massive lore bombs. All that’s left is to wait for Warframe 1999 to be released in December 2024. The full release date will be announced on December 12.
